{"id":32,"date":"2019-08-22T20:24:28","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T00:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/settlement\/chapter\/lawsofsettlements_book_lod_2_development\/"},"modified":"2020-04-24T09:32:11","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T13:32:11","slug":"lawsofsettlements_book_lod_2_development","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/settlement\/chapter\/lawsofsettlements_book_lod_2_development\/","title":{"raw":"Development","rendered":"Development"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_31\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1000\"]\"row Richmond, BC, Canada. Image courtesy of the Author.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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<\/a>7.<\/span> The development and renewal of settlements is a continuous process. If it stops, conditions for its death are created, but how long it will take depends on many factors.<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n

The word settlement is often used to describe a physical product, a \u2018thing\u2019 in itself, or a collection of \u2018things\u2019 (i.e. buildings). Now, more than ever before however, it is clear that settlements are processes: a series of actions created by a diversity of people that yields material \u2018things\u2019 in space. What we experience as a settlement day-to-day is a (seemingly) static moment in a dynamic process of necessary and continuous change. This is echoed by Janet Abu-Lughod in \u201cThe Islamic City: Historical Myths, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance\u201d as she describes the socio-cultural processes that affected the creation of traditional Islamic urban form. \u201cA city at one point in time is a still photograph of a complex system of building and destroying, of organizing and reorganizing, and so on.\u201d She concludes: \u201cCities are processes, not products\u201d (Abu-Lughod, 1987, p. 172). This applies to all settlements.<\/p>\r\n

Well-known urbanist Kevin Lynch speaks well to this in his attempts to capture the various aspects of settlement form as: \u201c\u2026solely the inert physical thing? Or the living organisms too? The actions people engage in? The social structure? The economic system? The ecological system? The control of the space and its meaning? The way it presents itself to the senses? Its daily and seasonal rhythms? Its secular changes?\u201d (Lynch, \u00a01981, p. 48) He ultimately describes settlements as \u201c\u2026the spatial arrangement of persons doing things, the resulting spatial flows of persons, goods, and information, and the physical features which modify space in some way significant to those actions, including enclosures, surfaces, channels, ambiences and objects. Further, the description must include the cyclical and secular changes in those spatial distributions, the control of space and the perception of it\u201d (Lynch, p. 48).<\/p>\r\n

As a result, if the process of settlement stops, conditions that can lead to its death ensue. However, the amount of time required for a settlement to die varies greatly\u2014depending on a diversity of factors, discussed later in Extinction<\/span><\/em> (Laws 16<\/a>, 17<\/a>, 18<\/a>, 19<\/a>, 20<\/a>, 21<\/a><\/span>).<\/p>\r\n

Regardless, the inability to understand settlements as processes of continual change has many important implications. For example, the perception that a settlement is the sole result of static physical \u2018objects\u2019 such as houses, schools, or cars, can lead to false expectations, errors in judgement, and flawed attempts to prevent change from occurring. Worse still, it can prevent measures that foster the successful and\/or healthy development of a settlement. The worst cases of NIMBYism fall under this category.<\/p>\r\n

FURTHER READING (full citations found in reference list<\/a>):<\/p>\r\n\r\n